Yurodny Haivka Project

The Yurodny Haivka project will be premiered at St. Carthage’s Cathedral on May 29th as part of the Lismore Music Festival and recorded at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) in Belfast in June 2014.

The recipient of the Arts Council Project Award 2013 and the Arts Council Recording Award 2013 managed by Music Network, Haivka will be a new type of Yurodny album, with an emphasis on unification of interpretative technique and source material. In the first two albums the objective was to demonstrate diversity of material and approaches, the new record will aim to show a singularity in approach by exploring repertoire from a more focused geographical territory – the traditional music of Ukraine. This long-awaited third release by the group follows on from their award-winning second album Evenset, which was released to critical acclaim in 2010 (according to international publication AllAboutJazz ‘Evenset is surely one of the most significant releases to come out of Ireland in decades’.)

This more direct vision will be reinforced by the presence of four leading Ukrainian musicians, singers, ethnomusicologists and composers whose direct contribution to the project will provide a cultural immediacy and root the music in a long line of tradition and study, whilst also propelling it into the 21st Century.

At the centre of the Haivka project is a new work Sounds of Signs / Звуки Знаків by Alla Zagaykevych, Ukraine’s leading electroacoustic composer who is internationally renowned for her groundbreaking work at IRCAM and Darmstadt, and for creating the Electroacoustic Lab at the National Academy of Music in Kiev.

Her piece will integrate with a two-year research project conducted by Yurodny in Dublin, Oslo and Copenhagen: Yurodny SciLens. This work involved the design and build of new virtual and physical interfaces that are capable of mapping gestural data to the control of electroacoustic processing in real-time, and uses cutting edge experimental software and hardware in its development.

At the centre of the Yurodny ensemble for the premiere of Sounds of Signs is cellist Kate Ellis, soloist for the performance and recording. Also featured are singers Susanna Karpenko and Olesya Zdorovetska, two of the leading figures in the Ukrainian traditional and improvised music world, and Iryna Klymenko, who as well as being a leading vocalist and performer is also Ukraine’s foremost ethnomusicologist and folklorist.

Haivka will be released on Diatribe, Ireland's leading record label for new music.